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Topic: angry at friends-what to say? (Read 17031 times)

This happened yesterday, and I am wondering if I should say anything to my friends about what happened.

My college housing closed for the winter, so my friends and I have gone back to our parents' homes. Before the break, I made a plan with some friends that we would all meet in a city and spend the day there. The plan was that my three friends and an acquaintance who lived far from the city would go there the night before and spend the night with my acquaintance's older sister, who is also an acquaintance of mine. My three friends are much closer to the two sisters than I am. I had spent time with them, but just never enough to call them friends. My parents house is fairly close to the city, so I was going to take the train in and meet them for lunch. I wasn't too worried about getting around the city alone, as the streets in that area all have numbers, so it is pretty easy.

I got to the restaurant just fine and waited. After awhile, I got a call from my friend Mike, telling me that the sisters had decided to go to a different restaurant in a different part of the city, one without numbered streets. I told him I had no idea where that restaurant was, and asked for some help. He said they were taking the subway since it was a bit far to walk. I tried to find out where they were, but Mike was just following along and had no idea where they were at the moment. I finally get the info from him and realize that the subway station they are headed to is very close to where I am, so I ask Mike to tell the others to just give me a few minutes to get there, so that we could all head to the restaurant together, since I didn't know where it was.

A few minutes later, I get a call from my friend Marie, telling me that they were leaving without me! Apparently, the older sister was worried that there would be a long line at the restaurant and had decided that the group should leave, even though if they had waited just a couple more minutes, I would have joined them. I ask them to please wait for me, since I really wasn't confident that I could find this place by myself, but Marie just says that she is sorry, but the sisters really want to leave. Marie doesn't know the directions to the restaurant, so she puts the older sister on the phone. I'm having a lot of trouble hearing her, so I tell her to hang up and text me the directions. Instead, Older Sister decides that screaming the directions in my ear is a good idea. I finally get her to hang up and text the directions. The directions turn out to be missing a few crucial steps, but I manage to get some help from a cashier at a store and finally make it to the restaurant.

Naturally, I'm in a bad mood from all this, but I do manage to have fun for the rest of the day. Until it is time to go home, that is. My friends and the Younger Sister need to go back to Older Sister's apartment to get the car, so that they can leave. I need to head back to the train, but since I am now in a different area of the city than the one I arrived in, I don't know where the station is. It is also night time, and while it probably isn't that dangerous, I am a little uneasy about wandering around alone. So I ask if they could walk with me back to the station before they headed home. Younger Sister says, sorry, but they really need to get on the road. Older Sister rattles off some directions for me, which I assume are also useless. My friends kind of shrug their shoulders and say goodbye to me, and the whole group leaves me there by myself. Fortunately, I manage to get directions from a barista, and find the way to the station, which turned out to be about a 5 minute walk from where the group had left me! I also realized that the station was very close to the restaurant where we had lunch, and that if I had been informed that the plan had changed sooner, I would have gotten off the train at the stop to begin with and avoided this whole mess.

Clearly what happened was that the Sisters, who were basically in charge of all the plans, didn't care much about me since I am not their friend. My friends said they were concerned about me, yet didn't attempt to convince the Sisters to help me, and didn't want to help me themselves. I'm pretty hurt that they just went along with what the Sisters wanted. I'm wondering if I should say anything to them. I know if one of them had been nervous about being in a big, unfamiliar city alone, I would have done everything I could to meet up with them, so that they wouldn't have to be alone.

How long have you been friends with these people? At this point, their total lack of concern for your safety and well-being, together with their unwillingness to stand up for you at all makes me think they're not really worth your time and effort.

At the very least, if avoiding them is completely impossible, I would never make any sort of plans with them again, and I would tell them why.

I think you're completely justified in being angry, for what it's worth, and I'm sorry I don't have better advice.

I hate to say this, but you can't expect others to take care of your travel arrangements. If someone agrees to join me for supper at a restaurant, I assume they have taken care of plans to get home. I would be surprised if they asked me to walk them anywhere afterward. If that is a condition of your meeting them, you should tell them up front that you can meet them if they will walk you to the closest transit station afterward.

I tend to assume that people are in control of their own transportation unless they tell me otherwise, and hopefully up front.

How long have you been friends with these people? At this point, their total lack of concern for your safety and well-being, together with their unwillingness to stand up for you at all makes me think they're not really worth your time and effort.

At the very least, if avoiding them is completely impossible, I would never make any sort of plans with them again, and I would tell them why.

I think you're completely justified in being angry, for what it's worth, and I'm sorry I don't have better advice.

POD. I'd be upset too, and from the sound of it, the OP did have control of her transportation and knew how to get to the original meeting place, but when plans were changed on her, they couldn't be bothered to make sure she was able to join them.

Logged

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. -Desiderata

I hate to say this, but you can't expect others to take care of your travel arrangements. If someone agrees to join me for supper at a restaurant, I assume they have taken care of plans to get home. I would be surprised if they asked me to walk them anywhere afterward. If that is a condition of your meeting them, you should tell them up front that you can meet them if they will walk you to the closest transit station afterward.

I tend to assume that people are in control of their own transportation unless they tell me otherwise, and hopefully up front.

I did have plans to get home, but since they changed the plans for the day, my plan didn't work anymore. I just don't understand why it would have been a big deal to help me in such a small way, especially since I couldn't have planned much better than I already had.

I hate to say this, but you can't expect others to take care of your travel arrangements. If someone agrees to join me for supper at a restaurant, I assume they have taken care of plans to get home. I would be surprised if they asked me to walk them anywhere afterward. If that is a condition of your meeting them, you should tell them up front that you can meet them if they will walk you to the closest transit station afterward.

I tend to assume that people are in control of their own transportation unless they tell me otherwise, and hopefully up front.

I did have plans to get home, but since they changed the plans for the day, my plan didn't work anymore. I just don't understand why it would have been a big deal to help me in such a small way, especially since I couldn't have planned much better than I already had.

Maybe I'm confused. You arrived at a transit station and walked to the restaurant. But you couldn't return to that same transit station for the ride home?

I don't think there's much you can say. They've shown you where you stand in their regard (which is pretty much nowhere), so I think you should accept that and find better friends. If they're puzzled as to why you're no longer friends with them, I doubt you explaining it will get anything but a pile of excuses.

As for the sisters, leave them as acquaintances and never arrange to meet up with them again.

I hate to say this, but you can't expect others to take care of your travel arrangements. If someone agrees to join me for supper at a restaurant, I assume they have taken care of plans to get home. I would be surprised if they asked me to walk them anywhere afterward. If that is a condition of your meeting them, you should tell them up front that you can meet them if they will walk you to the closest transit station afterward.

I tend to assume that people are in control of their own transportation unless they tell me otherwise, and hopefully up front.

The OP had made her own travel arrangements and there wouldn't have been a problem IF the others had stuck to the original plan. Instead, they took her somewhere that she had no familiarity with and essentially ditched her in a strange part of town AT NIGHT. Personally, I think the sisters were trying to ditch her from the get-go.

OP, refuse to make any further plans with these so-called friends and, if asked, say, "I cannot trust you after you DITCHED me." Also, I'd work on finding a new group of friends.

I hate to say this, but you can't expect others to take care of your travel arrangements. If someone agrees to join me for supper at a restaurant, I assume they have taken care of plans to get home. I would be surprised if they asked me to walk them anywhere afterward. If that is a condition of your meeting them, you should tell them up front that you can meet them if they will walk you to the closest transit station afterward.

I tend to assume that people are in control of their own transportation unless they tell me otherwise, and hopefully up front.

I did have plans to get home, but since they changed the plans for the day, my plan didn't work anymore. I just don't understand why it would have been a big deal to help me in such a small way, especially since I couldn't have planned much better than I already had.

Maybe I'm confused. You arrived at a transit station and walked to the restaurant. But you couldn't return to that same transit station for the ride home?

The restaurant plans were changed, so I had to get on a subway (alone) to head to a different part of the city. If I had tried to walk to the original train station I had arrived at, I would have collapsed from exhaustion before getting all the way back there.

The only part of the story where I think your friends were rude was changing the restaurant at the last minute and not waiting for you to join them. It sounds like it wasn't that far from the original place though, but your unfamiliarity with the city made it hard for you to adapt to the change easily. The rest of it I think is par for the course when dealing with a semi-large group of people, especially when the group is a mix of 'groups' and not all close-knit with similar agendas. When I was in college and my early 20's there were so many group outings like this where no one could come to a consensus, or more dominant people would dictate the plans and expect everyone to follow. My solution was to simply stop putting myself in these situations and avoid group outings. I wouldn't say anything to your friends except "next time the plan is changing, I need you to give me more than 5 minutes notice, please" and otherwise avoid them if the group is too big.

I think you are justifiably upset, but I also think I would let this slide. I agree with the posters who said travel arrangements are up to you. I think it would have been nice for your friends to show more concern for you, but I also know that not everyone "gets" that this is a big deal to you. I know for me, I would probably have shown you more concern but frankly I would be inwardly thinking, "why can't she figure this out and do it on her own?"

These people behaved thoughtlessly toward you several times during the course of the evening. It sounds like they either didn't want you to join them or didn't care one way or another. I hate to say this but you need better friends. Don't hang around with people who treat you this way.

And these are your friends because.......? Friends should have more concern about each other. If you were in a part of town you weren't familiar with and felt even the slightest bit uneasy, a friend would help you.

These people behaved thoughtlessly toward you several times during the course of the evening. It sounds like they either didn't want you to join them or didn't care one way or another. I hate to say this but you need better friends. Don't hang around with people who treat you this way.

I don't know how close you were with these friends before this incident, but I don't think much of them. You arranged your transportation around the plans that were made ahead of time. I think changing them so late that you were already at the agreed upon restaurant when you learned of the changes was incredibly rude and after not being able to get good directions to the new restaurant, I probably would have turned around and gone home. Instead, you were flexible and made the effort to join them at the second location. However, they could not reciprocate any flexibility to be sure you made it to the train station safely. That is not the way friends treat friends. I would think long and hard before making plans with these thoughtless, unreliable people again.

Being the wimp that I am, I would probably not say anything to them but wouldn't consider them friends unless they offered a sincere apology and never let it happen again. I'm so sorry you were on the receiving end of such thoughtless and hurtful behavior.